


The Cure for Love

by haissitall



Category: Half-Life
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, implied one-sided Judith/Eli
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24232603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haissitall/pseuds/haissitall
Summary: Judith suffers from the Hanahaki disease.
Kudos: 4





	The Cure for Love

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Unrequited love / Неразделённая любовь](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/621340) by Haissitall. 



> if you are as starved for Judith content as i am please accept this awkward translation of a tiny drabble

The flowers were mostly simple, very modest, sometimes clover, sometimes daisies, small ones that could grow somewhere near the curb, inconspicuous and unremarkable. They stuck to the bottom of the sink, and Judith tried not to look at them for too long before washing them off. Then she slowly inhaled through her nose, fearing another loud coughing fit rising from her lungs, scratched with thin roots.

It often became difficult for her to breathe at night, and she quietly choked on her run to the bathroom so as not to wake anyone in their densely populated base. It stopped only when she finally spat out another dandelion, coloring her tongue with yellow pollen. Sometimes she did not return to bed, but sat with her elbows on the sink, propping her head on the fist, listening to the humming of the greenish lamp. She wanted to cry and at times she could. These days she only blinked away a thin veil of tears, rubbed her eyes and sniffed a couple of times, feeling nothing but a load of indifference somewhere in the middle of the chest. Now that such fits were routine, falling asleep after them had become much easier.

Judith wasn’t hiding it, but she didn’t want anyone to know about it. Before the Combine arrived, this question was not so politicized, but now that the authorities insisted on drug treatment and stuffed the population with dubious pills with or without reason, the opinions of the Resistance swung strongly towards psychotherapy. Given that in their conditions normal psychotherapy was practically inaccessible, their approach consisted mainly of a smiling theory that spoke in a soft voice that those who suffer from such ailment just need to talk it out.

Judith absolutely did not want to talk and clumsily explained the cough with a cold. Because of this, Eli often asked about her health and even promised to think about how to make their base warmer; she thanked him and replied that he had nothing to worry about, suppressing this tickling feeling at the base of her throat, so as not to cough right in front of him. Out of all who should not have known about this, he was at the top of the list.

She was not sure if Wallace Breen was on this list. In any case, Judith was so used to the constant aching chest pain and to the suffocating need to cough out wildflowers in the locked bathroom from time to time, that she did not even think that he could notice. He knocked politely on the door and asked if everything was in order, and she could not answer, shuddering in coughing and vomiting, spitting out some very large, vile cornflower. “Yes,” she later told him in a hoarse, stifled voice, not sure if he had heard her.

When he apeared to be gone, Judith, after habitually washing the face, rinsing her throat and rubbing her watery eyes, went out. He wasn't at the door, and she breathed a sigh of relief, glad that she did not have to explain anything. His modest minimalist apartment, shrouded in this dark bluish metal of the Citadel, met her with fresh coldness and compact cardboard package on a usually empty coffee table.

Yes, that was definitely it. Pills with the proud Combine logo on a box. They say, they fought not the symptom (the flowers), but the cause of the disease. Love. The Resistance criticized them for this - they say, they took everything human from people - but, on the other hand, if you can make a cure for depression, then why, if you think a little more, do not make a cure for this unpleasant condition too?

Inside some cells were empty from the squeezed out pills - this package was obviously used. It's better not to ask Breen about this, of course: something told her that he, too, would absolutely not want to talk.  
After turning it in her hands, Judith closed it and laid it back on the table. Then she took it again. She took out a pill and, putting it in her mouth, swallowed it with saliva. Come what may. She was tired. Her mouth was still bitter with recent vomiting in the bathroom.

Of course, the medicine could not act so quickly, and it was pure auto-suggestion, but it really seemed to her that the usual chest pain had receded. She sighed and sat back, breathing a little more freely.


End file.
